Welcome to Blooming Friday again! The weeks pass really quickly and we're soon entering into the month of April. During my daily walks with my dogs, I walk past a big Pussy Willow (Salix caprea) which is loaden with the softest catkins...

This early in Spring, the male catkins are covered in soft, greyish fur. Soon the small flowers will open - loaded with nectar and pollen. By the way, did you know that there are natural rooting hormones in the branches of Salix? All you have to do is stick a couple of small branches into the water when you're trying to root for example Hibiscus.

Welcome to Blooming Friday! Every Thursdag evening, there will be a new, Blooming Friday post. If you would also like to join, simply publish your blooming post on your blog and link back to here. You can either stick to my theme, or make up your own. After publishing, you return here to sign Mister Linky at the bottom of each post. Feel free to copy and use the logo if you want to. And, most important of all - don't forget to have fun while you visit each other!

Or maybe it's not spring after all?? As I look out through the window, it doesn't look like it. A couple of hours ago it started snowing again, so right now it seems as though winter has returned...Nevertheless, I wish you all a lovely and blooming weekend!

I have to admit something. My seedings often fail. Every year, I promise myself to stop sowing seeds and to buy plants instead. But in the middle of winter, when I long desperately for the sun and warmer weather, the seed catalogues plump down into my mailbox. And then I can't resist. I order a lot of seeds and dream about my bringing up chubby plants. Dream, that is! - Why do my sowings often get screwed up?

On International Women's Day, I read about a nine year-old girl in Brazil, who regularly was raped by her step father. I read about how this girl was expecting twins and how she got an abortion. I read about the Arch Bishop of Brazil who condemned the abortion - despite the fact that the little girl was in danger of dying, due to the pregnancy. I read about how that same Arch Bishop has excluded the midwife, the doctor and the girl's mother from the Catholic Church - while, at the same time, he lets the step father go free. This is what I read about on International Women's Day, 2009.

There were lots of luscious red and yellow Canna Lilies growing in Santa Barbara, California, when we went there in the autumn of 2007. Since it was the end of the growing season, many of those had seedpods, filled with mature seeds. For some unknown reason, some of those seeds happened to end up in my suitcase. They germinated willingly, and I got a lot of Canna lilies. Most of them were red and yellow like their mother, but one turned out to be daintily yellow with red markings: Chamelion. Normally, I'm not particularly fond of yellow flowers...but this one I like! As the flower ages, it turns cream white...